Households across Luton, Bedfordshire, will begin receiving weekly food waste collections from Tuesday 31 March 2026. Luton Borough Council is launching the service to meet new national rules, with the aim of recycling food scraps into renewable energy and fertiliser.
More than 60,000 kitchen caddies have already been delivered to homes that have their own wheelie bins. Residents are being asked to start using these small indoor bins now and place their outdoor food containers at the kerbside by 6am on their usual collection day.
The collected waste will be sent to a special processing plant where it is turned into electricity and farm fertiliser. Around 35 per cent of household rubbish currently thrown away in the town is food waste, and this new system is designed to reduce the amount of general waste sent to landfill.
This change is part of a national plan called Simpler Recycling and is supported by funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. While the service currently applies only to houses, the council plans to introduce food recycling for flats and communal buildings over the coming months.
If a household has not yet received a caddy, they can contact the council by emailing [email protected] for assistance.
About this article: This story was put together with the help of AI tools and checked by a real person on our team. We're a small crew trying to cover as much of the UK as we can on a limited budget. We're getting better every day - but we're not perfect yet. If something looks off, let us know. You're part of the process.
